Complete Recordings

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Liliput have been part of post-punk's vast cultural myth since its inception. Who could resist a passel of Swiss kids with a jones for punk rock and outfits made of newspaper? Their work is as tart, wry, political, thoughtful and exciting as anything to come out of that scene. At least, so we were told. The band's output has been out of print for at least a decade, and, although authorities across the cultural landscape have sold the band as the lost grail of the punk rock scene, anyone seeking to hear their music had to content themselves with occasional used-record finds and the stories related by others.

The concern that accompanies a reissue like this is, once stripped of the mysteries of history and unquestioned praise, how does the band sound? After all, encomiums by Greil Marcus carry all the weight in the world when nobody can listen to the records and say differently. What's more, how kind will history be to a bunch of Swiss kids prone to outbursts of unrestrained gibberish and clattery squall?

Plenty kind, as it turns out. Liliput, known in less copyright-concerned territories as Kleenex, sound very much of a piece with contemporaries like Gang of Four and Wire, minus those bands' dour miens. The lumbering, funk-with-a-Ph.D-in-gender-studies basslines that spot most records of this ilk are in full effect here, and guitarist/singer Marlene Marder declaims in that bored-but-purposeful vocal style Rough Trade fans lap up like milk. The lyric themes du jour center around social issues in miniature. Here, dates, love, and even grocery shopping all take on unconsidered political ramifications.

Anyone wondering why this lavish, two-disc collection of everything the band ever put to tape was issued through Kill Rock Stars will have their doubts addressed in short order. After all, the political, aesthetically adventurous punk roster the Olympia-based label was built on seems directly descended from Liliput's family tree. The nascent beginnings of the Sleater-Kinney/Bikini Kill/Huggy Bear DNA-chain can be heard here in luminous clarity.

What separates Liliput from the pack, as has been noted elsewhere, is their giddy sense of Dada humor. The instrumentation on many of these songs has to be heard to be believed, overstuffed with the rattles of kitschy percussion, the ping of triangles, the hooting of clearly new-to-the-owner horns. "Hitch-Hike" features hysterically incompetent saxophone accompaniment, with the song's hook played on an urgent-sounding traffic whistle. "When the Cat's Away" prefigures the deceptive innocence of twee-pop by backing up its tale of contemporary anxiety with an awkward sounding-polka and outlandish kissing sounds.

Adding to the good humor of the proceedings, Liliput's patented flair for gibberish-- different languages, babble, speaking in imaginary tongues-- pours out everywhere. Take the aptly-titled "Outburst," where deadpan verses alternate with a chorus composed of glottal grunts and occasional, high-pitched birdcalls. Though the band's late-period penchant for dubby-sounding rhythm tracks doesn't serve them as well as their earlier punkish urgency, "Umamm" generates menace and charm purely through quiet, wordless growls. Liliput sound so excited to be saying anything that even pure, human-generated noise is expression enough.

Which is probably where this band connect with the Kill Rock Stars' present-day celebs. Like the best post-punk, Liliput celebrate the right rock gives to say anything, expressing their keen, not-humorless intellects through voices and music alike. Their influence can be heard throughout the riot-grrl Diaspora of modern times, but Liliput managed one crucial difference: they made radical social and aesthetic re-engineering sound like the greatest party you've ever been to in your life.